1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle input system which is provided in the cabin of an automobile.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, an automobile has more and more equipment on board so that safety and comfort can be improved. Specifically, an air conditioner or an audio system is provided as standard equipment, and a car-navigation system has been popular. In the years ahead, equipment related to car communication mainly including telematics is expected to be increasingly popular. As a single input unit which is capable of operating many kinds of such equipment in common, there is known, for example, the one described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-68162 specification. In this specification, a switch system is proposed which is shown in FIG. 12.
In FIG. 12, reference numerals 101 to 104 denote push selection switches, and a reference numeral 105 designates a dial operation unit. The dial operation unit 105 is formed by a disk-shaped member which turns around a shaft located in the up-and-down directions of FIG. 12. In the peripheral part of this disk-shaped member, grooves are formed for preventing slipping. The dial operation unit 105 shown in FIG. 12 corresponds to its disk-shaped member's periphery, if seen from the directions perpendicular to the rotation shaft.
For example, if the dial operation unit 105 is turned, the equipment to be operated is switched. Thereby, the push selection switches 101 to 104 each change into a switch for selecting equipment, such as an air conditioner, an audio system, a car-navigation system and a communication device. Or, they change into a switch for selecting a function of audio equipment, such as an FM radio, an AM radio, a CD (or compact disk) player and a tape recorder. Then, such a selection switch is displayed in a display unit, so that an operator can operate it while checking the contents of an operation.
However, in an input unit connected to various such in-vehicle equipment operation units as described above, let's assume that the connected equipment to be operated has been replaced. In this case, if the equipment provided by the replacement has the same function as the original equipment as well as if it is controlled using the same control signal, it can be operated without any trouble by the above described input unit. On the other hand, if the equipment provided by the replacement has a different function, or if it is controlled using a different control signal, the input unit cannot output a control signal which corresponds to the substituted equipment. This makes it difficult to operate such fresh substituted equipment using this input unit. In addition, if new equipment is added, then alike, the input unit cannot output a control signal which corresponds to the freshly-added equipment. Thus, it is hard to operate such newly-added equipment using this input unit.
Therefore, in such an input unit as described above, a disadvantage arises in that newly-added or substituted equipment cannot be operated.